Aerosol cans are extensively used for a wide variety of products, ranging from lubricants, paint, personal care products, food products, insulation and caulks, herbicides and insecticides to plain compressed air for cleaning. Over 10 billion cans are produced annually in the US alone.
One of the smallest, but critical components for dispensing the products in a spray configuration (as distinct from a stream as in the case of insulation materials) is the “button”. The button is the small cylindrical plastic element on the top of the can that is pressed by the finger to actuate dispensing of the product contents of the can. This button typically contains intersecting channels terminating in an exterior aperture of engineered design and dimensions that comprises the “valve” which forms the spray pattern and droplet size.
Button valves for wide area coverage, such with paints, form a distinctive pattern, and the user must develop skill to lay down the materials evenly and without drips. These wide area pattern sprays also create extensive overspray that wastes product and contaminates the environment, as well as posing a health hazard for many products, such as insecticides and herbicides.
Some aerosolized products require delivery into remote recesses. Current methods of dispensing such products employ a button, the valve orifice of which is recessed to allow for insertion of a long extender tube so that the point of discharge is on the order of 6″ away from the button. Typically these extender tubes are very difficult to insert, often requiring substantial force and precise alignment, akin to threading a needle. In addition there are no effective methods of storing the extender tube after use. U.S. Pat. No. 5,772,084 of Yale and patent Publication 2003/0066846 A1 of DiMeglio propose functional storage solutions, but are neither practical to use or produce. More recently, the maker of the popular lubricant WD-40, after 40 years of offering its product with an extender tube, now offers a special cap with a little horizontal groove on the top into which the “straw”, as the extender tube is called, can be snapped to retain it after use. However, this makes the can effectively 6″ wide and not convenient for post-use storage. That is, since the straw extends several inches on both sides of the can, it can easily be knocked-off and lost when bumped by adjacent cans or the walls of a storage cabinet, box or tool chest. Loosing the straw reduces the product to uselessness, as the wide area nozzle pattern cannot be used to deliver lubricant precisely where it is needed in controlled amounts. Thus, the “new” WD-40 solution is no solution. Rather, it merely substitutes a new and different problem for the old one.
An additional problem is that the current button valves must be actuated vertically (they are pressed downwardly to release product) and mounted on stiff valve actuator springs. This means that proportional control of the rate of dispensing is not possible. The result is that the user usually tries to control the amount of product dispense by a time duration method, a “just a quick squirt” approach. It is universally recognized that this approach rarely works, is not reproducible, and is very difficult to achieve, resulting in overspray or under-spray, not exact spray.
Accordingly there is a need in the art for an aerosol can product delivery system that improves the efficiency of dispensing the contents, improves the directional control, limits the amount of product to reduce the tendency to overspray, stores with the aerosol can, and seals the nozzle.